Colleague is insulting my activism/lifestyle and it's very cruel. What to do?

Sociologist31d6

I'm an animal rights activist and a vegan. People generally give me crap for it even though I don't bring it up unless asked. I think they do this because underneath the surface, they know eating meat is bad, but I digress. My colleague, we'll call him "Jim Bob," takes it to another level. Yesterday, I was telling another colleague about the Smithfield Foods and some of the awful things they do to pigs, particularly how they keep them in pens where they literally can't move, they go insane, and once they stop producing other pigs, they kill them. It's truly awful and my non-awful colleague agreed.

Jim Bob was listening in on the conversation and later on that day brought back a pig to the office. He told me said pigs name was "Oinkie," and that he was going to f*ck it, as is tradition in his hometown of Laurel, Mississippi. And sure enough, he made love to that pig right in front of my eyes while drinking from a jug of homemade bathtub moonshine and shouting "hyuck hyuck hyuck hyuck!" Upon completing fornication, Jim Bob said he would be making Oinkie into bacon that he would consume at a later date. Jim Bob also believes bacon is a natural cure for the gum disease known as gingivitis, which Jim Bob suffers from.

Overall, his actions were cruel, it was abuse, and partially a result of him hating my veganism and animal rights activism. I spoke with the department chair and was told there is nothing that can be done about it because these things are ingrained in southern culture and therefore punishing him would violate his civil rights. But Jim Bob's actions were grotesque. I don't know what else I can do. Thoughts?

What trolling? I think what Smithfield Foods does to pigs in needlessly cruel. The pigs often wind up chewing on the pen until their teeth fall out because what they do is essentially solitary confinement for pigs. I also think my colleague fornicating with pigs because it's a tradition in the south is also really cruel and awful. Both practices need to end.

Despicable. We have a grad student in our department who does the same thing. Sometimes I walk into the office and he’s listening to Johnny Rebel on his laptop without speakers while coding on Stata. He also has a tendency to wear the same pair of overalls with only one strap fastened for weeks at a time. When I’ve confronted him about the smell and hygiene issues associated with this practice, he tried to offer me a glass pipe full of bathtub methamphetamine as an apology. I was dismayed.